Believe It Or Not, The Texas Power Grid Has Too Much Power

Texas uses a lot of power and has had to contend with rolling blackouts among other things. It also creates a lot of power and, apparently, throws a lot away.

Texas generates a lot of solar and wind energy. In fact, 3 of the largest "wind farms" in the world are located in the lone star state.

Texas is actually setting records for power generation but the grid isn't up to it.

Basically, we're producing record levels of power but our grid is old and doesn't have the capability to share or store the excess power that isn't being used.

Texas is on it's own grid and not connected to the rest of the United States of America so, any extra juice we have goes unused.

If the grid doesn't get the required upgrade the percentage of "lost" energy could grow to almost 15% of wind generated power and almost 20% of solar generated power.

Our analysis shows that on days with more wind and solar generation and strong system electricity demand, limited transmission line capacity restricted wind and solar generation flows, and curtailments occurred. These types of curtailments account for 36% of the projected curtailments in 2035, which could be reduced by upgrading the transmission system. - elektrek.com

We're dealing with rolling blackouts and other energy related shortages and issues, meanwhile, we're letting a lot of energy that we produced go unused.

The fact that the Texas grid isn't connected to other grids, along with the needed upgrades, is why Texas had such huge problems during the big freeze back in 2021.